Five Things Friday

WEEEEEEEEEEEEKEND! It’s finally here. I’m taking an early leave from work today to get some stuff done before this weekend-more on that after Saturday. I got secrets, yo.

1) So, Ashley posted a drinking kitty photo today. Rebuttal? Of course.

Got this photo from my brother while he was dogsitting. Foster drinks because Mommy leaves.

2) So I may have mentioned that part of my knee pain issue was that I was running on way overdue old shoes. I got new running shoes Monday night, after my 6 mile run left me with a bit of knee pain. They were simply this year’s model of my Saucony’s, so no big deal. BUT..I’ve only run in those babies 4 times now, and look what I’ve already done:

Yep, got bloody toe of doom yesterday so bad it soaked through my sock AND my shoe. And the best part? I didn’t even notice it had happened until I took my shoes back out of my gym bag last night. That’s hardcore!

3) Beyond excited for our wine pairing dinner tonight. I’ve got a new dress to wear (houndstooth yay!), Jeff’s stoked, it’s going to be a good time. Yay birthday weekend commence!

4) I ran yesterday like I’d threatened to…and it didn’t hurt. I’ve got a five miler planned today that will actually put my weekly miles to 30, an all time high. I’m going to keep foam rolling, keep doing some strength stuff, and hopefully this was really just a case shoes past their prime. The guy at our Running store told me that you’re supposed to replace every 4-500 miles…oops. I’m sure my last pair had nearly double that on them. I use so many different apps to track my exercise, and some didn’t get tracked, so I have been logging everything on mapmyfitness lately to stay on top of things. Hopefully having that log and knowing when I started running on these shoes will give me a better indicator of when to change out.

5) All the good TV shows came back from hiatus at just the right time, because we’re almost out of episodes of “Being Human” on Netflix. First world problem right there.

That’s life, folks! I’ll get a recap of our wine pairing up once my post-dinner food coma dissipates. Have a great weekend!

The IT Crowd

Grumble grumble. Insert injured runner post here. My run last night was not pretty, but I did make 8 miles. Not the 9-10 I was hoping for, but 8 is solid. There was a lot of whimpering, and of course, there was a little situation where I had to pause at a stoplight for a moment, and when I went to start again my knee simply said no. I crumpled a bit, turned around, and gimped off the side of the road. And dude giggling at me in the front car at the light? Not. Cool. The pain is mostly on the lower outside of my knee, and by the time I stopped last night it was radiating up my thigh to my hip. I know it’s IT band syndrome. Thanks, karma, for giving the least patient and worst at resting person on earth the injury whose “cure” is rest. 

 

So what’s my plan? Well, I’ve got 8 more miles this week, and I’ll be damned if I’m stopping before that. So I’m doing all the stretching, icing, ibuprofen, and foam rolling I can, but I’m still planning on today’s lunch run. Soon-I’m going early to get it over with. If that means I’m a lump on the couch tonight, that’s cool. I’ve just been on SUCH a good streak lately and I don’t want to lose the changes my body has made. Rest is not a part of that just yet, and this weekend is too busy for me to try and squeeze them in then. 

Have you ever run with pain? What are the consequences? Have you ever watched “The IT Crowd”? I’ve seen a few episodes, but since I’m a tech team nerd now, I really need to give it another shot. 

Currently

Hey, all! I’ve been a slacker blogger lately so I decided it’s time for you all to catch up with me. What better way than discussing all my current faves and obsessions? 

So what am I currently…

Reading? Just finished “Tell the Wolves I’m Home”. Just picked up “Me Before You” by Jojo Moyes. I’ve heard good things about it, so I’m looking forward to starting it! 

Workout? Running, running, and more running. It’s my jam lately, and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve dropped the last few pounds I’ve been working towards, I’ve felt more confident and better on every single run, and it far exceeds the happy I get from similar time in a gym workout! 

Feeling? A little nervous. Today’s my long run and I’ve had some IT band issues as of late wreaking havoc on my knee. Hoping for the best, needing to mentally prepare for the worst. 

Watching? Just got Jeff hooked on Brooklyn 99 last night, so I imagine we’ll run through all the episodes of that. 

Eating? Everything. So. Much. Food. Seriously. I really look forward to my afternoon popcorn, and I’m hoping to sweet talk Jeff into making me one of his amazing pizzas tonight. 

Looking forward to? Jeff’s birthday this weekend! We’ve got a wine pairing dinner at our favorite restaurant Friday night, and I’ve got dinner plans for us Saturday, his actual birthday. It’s about time my husband and I are in the same decade! 

That’s really all I’ve got going on! Have a fantastic Wednesday and I’ll check back in later this week to let you know how the knee is holding up. 

Monday Morning Musings Again

Good Morning! Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend. Ours was fairly low key, with a fun party Saturday night to mix things up. Our friend had a fancy dress housewarming party. We have a few friends that are fantastic photographers, and it ends up with things like this being posted the next day: 

Yesterday, we spent the day at home being pretty low key. I spent a lot of time debating whether or not I should go for a run. I didn’t go-I’d promised myself 2 days off in a row and decided to honor that. It was a tough call, honestly-tougher than I thought. How many rest days do you take? I have been upping my mileage the last few weeks, and I’ve dropped a few pounds as a result. Since I’ve decided to refocus my exercise efforts primarily to running, I’ve become pretty obsessed with it. Last week I was so excited that I’d run 26.5 miles-just over a full marathon distance in 5 days. Not bad for the girl that usually hovers around the 10-15 mile mark. I think I’m going to keep this up and see where it takes me-and now I’ve got my cool stridebox goodies to try out! As long as I keep up the hot baths, foam rolling, and taking enough rest time I think I’m on the right track. 

Off to go host some testing sessions for a school! I have some running on the docket for today, 4-6 depending on if it’s outside or indoors. Have a great Monday! 

Spill it Sunday-BOOK IT edition

Spill it Sunday is here again! Hope everyone’s having a great weekend. Today is going to be a pretty lazy Sunday for us…and I love it! Arman is hosting another Spill it Sunday, and this week we’re talking about books. I LOVE reading and am a total book nerd, so this is right up my alley.

1. Favorite novel(s) of all time? Gosh, it’s hard to name just one. I love love love “The Art of Racing in the Rain”-it’s a book any pet lover should read. I also really enjoy Stephen King’s “Duma Key”. I need to go back and read some more of his older works, but this one is one I can read again and again. There’s tons of other books that I love too, check out my goodreads if you are seriously that interested. I will say I just finished “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” and it was really well written. Some of the passages and phrases really stick with me.

2. Favourite genre? I generally gravitate towards more mystery, crime, or even a bit of sci-fi. I also like some autobiographies and memoirs, and a few educational novels too-mostly about food. 🙂

3. Favourite childhood novel/Favourite teen novel? Oh, gosh. I was a bookworm as a kid too-does anyone else remember the “Book it” program through Pizza Hut? Anyway, as a younger girl, I loved “Wait Till Helen Comes”. It was super spooky and actually kind of bonded me and my friend Jen as adults. She was trying to explain her fear of open water swimming before went to a triathlon, and was trying to explain this book to me, and I instantly knew what it was. What are the odds of that? Friend karma right there.

As a teenager, I read everything by Christopher Pike. I loved his adult novel “The Season of Passage” and have always wondered why nobody’s made it into a movie yet. Actually, I’ve always wondered why nobody’s made any of his books into movies. That would be epic. And super dramatic.

4. Favourite Series? I’ll go ahead and admit to reading lots of series as a teen/young adult, but not much since then. Vampire Diaries (yes it was a super cheesy book series before becoming a delightfully cheesy tv series), Secret Circle, Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley whatever, I read it all. I have tubs of my adolescent books saved somewhere to give to some deserving tween someday.

5. Which book would you hope future generations will continue to consider a classic? Oh, gosh! I am not sure. I just hope some of my favorites get discovered too, but I don’t really care what people consider a “classic”.

6. Books I didn’t make it through-The Woman Upstairs and Office Girl. I can usually stick it out, but I couldn’t get into the first one and Office Girl was literally the most terrible thing I’ve ever tried to read. I can’t even convey-I chose to sit on a plane for hours in silence instead of reading that drivel.

And because Arman always requests a selfie…

How’s this for a selfie, Arman?

Five Things Friday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, we’ll just dive right in, K? It’s Friday. I’m happy about it. You’re happy about it. Lets get to enjoying it! 

1) This is what happens when you put a dirty sock on a dog’s nose. Imagine lots of giggling too, cuz that happened. Bedtime at our house is interesting. 

2) We FINALLY got my Stridebox the other day! Jeff got me a 3 month subscription to Stridebox for Valentine’s day, and although it said it shipped on the 3rd, there was some logistical nightmare that just delayed my gratification. It’s full of runner nutrition stuff, so I’ll review it once I’ve had a chance to ingest some of this stuff. I am just now getting to the stage of running where my distance is long enough that I need to bring water and possibly some kind of energy stuffs, so it’s perfectly timed. 

3) I am working on a very frustrating project at work-the client is just hell-bent on belittling me at every turn. Making me VERY glad it’s Friday. 

4) This is EXACTLY how I look trying to navigate the slushy spots when I run-we’re finally warming up and melting our snow.  

 

5) We don’t have a ton planned this weekend-YAY! I am on kitty patrol for a few friends tomorrow, and we’ve got a housewarming party Saturday night. Tonight I think we’re chilling out and making pizza at home. Ah, lazy Friday night. I loves you. 

Have a great weekend! 

 

Take a Little Trip With Me

Hop in our time machine as I take you back to the year..I’m not entirely sure. But I felt like doing a throw back Thursday post and I dig this old photo of me. So here we have it: 

Whitebeard the Pirate…Yarr!

Scandalous bathing beauty right there. I have no idea what house we were living in for this photo-we moved around a lot as a kid, but it looks like that could be my Grandparents house. I  had a thing about giving myself a bubble beard when I was a kid-that shit was funny. I still take baths to relax-I attribute my ability to run, cross train, and generally do my workouts as much as I do to my love of scalding hot bubble baths and my heated blanket that I use on our couch. Heat therapy works! 

-Do you have any favorite photos of yourself as a kid? Jeff loves that we keep finding photos of me trying to operate the vacuum at a young age-keeping up with my “wifely duties” even as a youngun! 

Work Out Wednesday

Hey! Remember me? I have been having a bit of a grumpy week so far, so I’ve held back from passing the frowning on to you. But it’s time to paste on my happy face and get moving, because we’re under 2 hours till I teach Boot Camp! What are we doing today, you ask? Why, let me tell you! 

It’s All in the Cards Boot Camp

5 minute run warmup

2 min cardio, 1 min strength move–we have 8 cards for each type, all with a different method of torture written on them. I’ll have my class call out a number combo and we’ll do those 2 exercises. What’s in the cards? Oh, burpees, star jacks, squats, you know. The usual. 

3 min running stairs

Stations

3 min stations. Your partner will be doing the mobile version of these while you’re doing the stationary: 

Inchworms/Plank Jacks

Walking Lunge/Plank

Frog Jumps/Bicycle Crunch. 

Run back across the room, switch places, repeat. When all teams have done all exercises, we’ll move on to: 

Side Squats/Jumping Jacks

Low Shuffle/Wall Sit

High Kicks/Lateral Raises

Down to the mat for some twists, crunches, and side planks, and we’ll call it a class! 

I’ve been running a lot more lately, mostly over my lunch hours. I put myself back together as best as I can, but I apologize to my coworkers for any extra aromatic experience you may be having. Just kidding! That’s perfume. It’s been hovering around 50 here, so I’ve gotten in some good miles. I don’t usually run this far in the first half of the week since I teach classes Tues/Wed, but it looks like tomorrow we’re in for some snow so I wanted to get the good running in while I could. Already up to almost 15 miles this week, which is amazing for me. Still working through some hydration issues, but I wore my hydration belt on my run today, and it didn’t bounce around as much, so that’s encouraging. I’d love to make it work because it also eliminates me having to carry my phone in my hand while I run, which is a pain in the rear. 

So that’s a workout Wednesday! Hope everyone’s having a good week and getting some good workouts in! 

Monday Morning Musings

One of my favorite things about running is that when you’re in the middle of a good one, your mind can wander off into the little caverns of memory, planning, or whatever instead of constantly doing “run math”. You know what I mean. “I’ve got x miles left, which is about y minutes…come on, you can do that!”. Am I the only person who does that? Please, tell me no. 

Anyway, this weekend’s long run and a little drive Jeff and I took got me thinking about perspective. It fixes everything, you know. It’s really hard to get perspective when you’re in the moment sometimes, but once you’re looking backwards, hindsight is 20/20. And it happens to everything. That run I had this weekend? There were some good moments, but I spent a lot of it beating myself up and “wanting” to quit. And when I had to stop and get a drink? Felt like a failure, like I wasn’t performing according to my “plan”. Got home, got showered up, and realized: “shut up, internal voice, I ran 7 miles and that’s all that matters. Not every run is like prancing through the forest and singing with the birds, after all”. 

Jeff and I were having a weekend-long discussion of our fictional dinner parties. You know, “if you could have dinner with one person, alive or dead, who would it be?” Jeff’s answer: Julia Child. My answer? My dad. We are both food nerds so we extended it to the 10 person dream chef’s table. Tried to make it a mixture of people we know and awesome chefs we’d love to meet. And that’s where my mind wandered. It reminded me of when Top Chef was doing the “Just Desserts” rounds.Which reminded me of when I had a thing for Johnny Iuzzini.

And now I realize my husband looks a bit like him…I win at life!

Which reminded me of when I was single and would watch like 3 episodes of TV on my DVR while going to bed and how the simple things are always what’s made me happy. Big stuff can disappoint you or it can be awesome, but a simple pleasure is always a simple pleasure. It just reminded me of how when I was single, all I could think about was how I was ALONE, and now that I’m looking back I realize how enjoyable it can be to just spend some time alone. It’s all in how you look at it. 

I’ve always been a bit of a pessimist. A lot sarcastic. A shade doom and gloom-I called it realism. But I’ve realized that there’s something to be said for seeing life as a half-full glass. Doesn’t make you cheesy, or too peppy, or any of those bright connotations dark and twisty Laura hated. It just means you see the good in things, and there’s nothing wrong with that. 

Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy Laura Anderson. 

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Six Things Sunday

I’ve been slacking a bit on the blog thing this week. I just haven’t had a lot going on that’s noteworthy! I managed to single out 6 things going on for me though: 

1) I’ve been running a bit more lately and loving it. I’m working on upping my weekly mileage and so far, so good. After yesterday’s 7 miles, my total for the week was 22. I’m usually closer to 10-15, so this is a great step in the right direction. Running is a good way for me to have a “sport” to focus on instead of just maniacally burning calories, so it’s something I intend to keep up. Even if that means pounding out 3 miles on the treadmill over lunch. 

2) We had a nice Valentine’s date last night! Went to the Single Barrel, the place where Jeff got to butcher his hog for his Christmas present. I always get their steak salad and love it, and Jeff had their bangers & mash. And we had a plate of pork frites to start: 

 

Pork frites are french fries with a pulled pork topping on them. They’re terrible for you, and terribly delicious, and I enjoyed them immensely. 

3) Last night, we got to witness a marriage 6 years in the making. Our friends Angela and Bryce were responsible for introducing Jeff and I. They’ve been together through studies abroad in Europe and firefighting in California, and have survived and thrived whether together or apart. They complement each other perfectly, and I was honored to be a part of their wedding (I ran the ceremony music). Cheers, Angela & Bryce!

4) I have GOT to work on my hydration. I say it all the time, but the last 1/3 of my run yesterday was god awful. I hadn’t brought along any water, and had really drank nothing but coffee all day. I had to stop at a store to get a drink of water because my lips were so chapped they bled. I skipped wearing my hydration belt because it creeps up my waist and messes with my arm swing, but I’m just going to have to find a way to work with that. 

5) Meeting a bunch of my family at a winery today, and I can’t wait! We all live within about 60 miles of each other, but don’t get together nearly often enough. And wine? Added bonus, because lately I am all about the Pinot Grigio. It’s my jam. 

6) Jeff’s about to go make me a veggie frittata for breakfast. My husband rules.